Aniello Fontano is an award winning playwright, screenwriter, and educator originally from Little Italy, Chicago. After receiving his BA in Directing and Design from the University of Illinois at Chicago, he earned his MFA in Dramatic Writing at New Mexico's flagship university, UNM, on teaching and graduate assistantships in Dramatic Writing and Women’s Studies. Currently, he is writing a new work for the Lee Strasberg Institute’s Clifford Odets Ensemble Commission that will premiere December 2023. Prior to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, he was writing for a show in development at Netflix and developing a project with writer/ producer christopher oscar peña (Insecure, how to make an American Son, Awe/Struck) and actor/director Ty Molbak (Immortality, Next Exit, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Beyond his work as a writer, he is a Board Member of Prop Theater in Chicago, once Associate Board Events Chairman and now volunteer with BUILD Chicago (a nationally respected gang intervention, violence prevention, and youth development organization based on Chicago’s West Side), an Art Department Lead Person in IATSE Chicago Local 476, a Writers Room Assistant in IATSE Los Angeles Local 871, and a member of SAG-AFTRA. He continues to be mentored by director Jude Weng (Only Murders in the Building, The Good Place, Twisted Metal).